11 Responses to ‘Man medicine’

Posted May 13

Wish I'd known of this a week ago, being on the tail end of some lurgi. I wonder about the rum vs flu thing though - does the rum burn out the viral infection, or do you just end up plastered and forget about being sick?

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Posted May 14

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Posted May 18

Democracy and stuff, but how do we introduce mandatory, instant & appeal free quarantine for these vectors that insist on stinking up the place?
I'm a humane and gentle man, I don't want punitive conditions, just a cattle-truck with an articulated arm to snatch the snufflers and snotty from public spaces.

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Respond to 'Man medicine'

Seriously, after long using a basic model Sunbeam and replacing it only every 3-4 years, I've had to buy six rice cookers in the past twelve months. They keep burning out.Granted, a couple of the replacements I bought were cheap no-name units from Woolies. I got everything I deserved dropping any money on them.But even the Sunbeam, and most recently a Russell Hobbs unit all burned out after one or two uses.I really don't want to go back to cooking rice on the stove top. I've had to relearn that arcane skill recently and there is nothing to recommend it. I'll happily check out any model anybody reading this is happy with.

John Birmingham puts forth...

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Posted January 27

have you checked if you have recently desecrated a shrine, or committed an offence against Inari Okami, the Shinto Godess of rice? inari-zushi is a packaged shusi roll of fried tofu used as an offering, though I doubt I could bring myself to offer that to anything.

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Posted January 27

Rice on the stovetop is not that hard. What's the problem? I have two ways of doing it. One taught to me by my Malaysian ex-MIL, and one forced upon me by ms insomniac when it was a WTF-are-you-doing-with-the-rice moment.

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i can't help in this regard - due to limited cupboard space i put a ban on electrical goods that could be replicated by a saucepan or frying pan. I use the Kylie Kwong method (which i'm pretty sure is bog standard) and it has never failed me.

John Birmingham asserts...

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Stove top. 1 part rice to 2 parts water. On high uncovered till it starts boiling. Turn down to low, lid on for 10mins. Take off heat and let sit for 10mins (do not under any circumstance take lid off). Draw back is this requires a small amount of attention whereas with a rice cooker you turn on and walk away.

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Respond to 'WTF went wrong with rice cookers?'

Last time I was in Hanoi, it was for work and somebody else was picking up my tab. Apart from a few business lunches, I mostly just ate at my hotel, the fabulous Metropole. (It was French Cheese Week. Don't you judge me).

This time with the fam in tow and a long way from Cheese Week I was forced onto the streets. Most people seem to eat most of their meals on the footpath in Hanoi. As I mentioned last time, there seems to be little if no regulation of street level businesses – or more likely little to no observance of any regulation. Literally hundreds of thousands of punters simply open for business on the street out in front of the family home.

We had breakfast comped as part of our hotel deals pretty much everywhere we went, but that left us to forage for lunch and dinner. I ate well, but dropped a couple of belt notches, which I was happy about. Partly it was the 12-15kms of walking every day, but partly it was also eating like the locals. There's not a lot of muffin content in Vietnamese cuisine.

They do have bread, of course. The famous Banh Mi, adapted from the French baguettes of the colonial era. I had two worth a shout out. One at a Hanoi cafe called Banh Mi 25 in the northern reaches of the Old Quarter, which was nice but not a patch on the fiery pork roll I had at a place in Hoi An made famous by Anthony Bourdian in his Netflix gourmet travel series.

I'll fess to be being skeptical of Banh Mi Phuong. There was always a long line of tourists out the front—like always, every hour of the night and day—and they were there because Bourdain had been there. How could any business retain its mojo under that onslaught.

But it seems they have. Our last night in Hoi An we took advantage of a small drop off in custom to dive in and grab some rolls for dinner. I had a spicy pork banh mi that came generously slathered with Phuong's secret sauce. Repairing to the craft beer joint down the street, which invited you to wash your banh mi down with their beer, I was frankly fucking blown away by just how good a simple meat and salad roll could be. Good enough that it was lucky we waited until the last night to eat there, otherwise I might never have gone anywhere else and I'd have missed out on this lady's rice pancakes; cooked over a mobile grill in the Hoi An markets.

She ladled some mystery fish and a rainbow spread of spices, leaves and vegetables into the pancake before nuking it with bright chili sauce and yoghurt. Thomas and I knocked that one over while the ladies were off clothes shopping. (Every second shop in Hoi An is a tailor or shoe maker).

By the time we were done in Hanoi, we were inhaling all sorts of roadside food and I developed a taste for the little Vietnamese donuts that village women sell for a few cents each.

Developed a taste for cheap beer and cocktails too. Wine is super expensive and not easy to get compared to spirits and ales; perhaps a final fuck you to the French. I coped. We stumbled across Beer Street by accident, while out exploring the old quarter one evening. It was a bit of a zoo scene, full of western backpackers and I could imagine it getting very untidy.

But there was also a pretty sweet gin bar we found near the Cathedral. The Mad Botanist. Five flights of steps up above a bbq pork place. I wouldn't want to negotiate the climb down after a solid session, but for quiet visit at cocktail hour it was just about perfect.

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Posted January 23

I've been there a couple of times, once in the late 90's and again about 7 years ago.
The food is brilliant, never had bad food anywhere.
Only once or twice even had average food, and that was in Saigon.

I'd go back to Hanoi in a heartbeat, with a side trip to Hoi An,

We rode old russian Urals from Hanoi down to Hoi An.
Great haircuts in Hoi An.

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Posted January 24

In Hoi An there is a chap sitting outside an orphanage with a big bucket of what looks like sump oil. I thought he was doing road side servicing. In fact he was selling black sesame seed soup. I had two a day while i was there. Heaven.

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Respond to 'Eating in Vietnam'

The internet is often lke a giant tractor spreading enormous tonnages of shit all over the world. And sometimes not. One thing it does do is globalise quirky regionalalisms like poutine or kangaroo scrotum coin purses

The internationalisation of Halloween was surely accelerated by a thousand Buzzfeed listicles. And I have a feeling we're not far away from everyone deciding they want in on America's annual festival of eating too much for Thanksgiving.

Me. I've decided I want some turkey. You don't see it very often on Australian menus. Even duck and goose are more common (and way less likely to be overcooked into a dry, joyless protein cud). But I was reading a Washinton Post bit on how to carve a turkey this morning (don't judge me, I just got off deadline, also the story boasted of an augmented reality bird carving tutorial), and now I just want to eat walking bird.

When you think about it, Thanksgiving is perfectly situated on the calendar for us. It's a few weeks into the summer drinking season, which officially commences a month before summer on Melbourne Cup day, and we like to eat things. Too many things and too much of them.

I'm serious enough about this that I'm thinking about looking for a restaurant which will feed me a bif turkey dinner with all the fixin's, whatever the fuck fixin's are.

8 Responses to ‘I think I want some turkey’

Posted November 21

What makes the turkey is the stuffing, you have to have righteous stuffing. Baste well and often with butter to prevent dryness. Cranberry is a must. Biscuits (the American hot fluffy ones), gravy, pumpkin pie, sweet corn- those are the fixins.

The best Thanksgiving Day turkey I ever had was cooked over a trash fire overseas. It tasted like burnt plastic. We were getting ready to leave that hellhole, so many thanks were given, and I thought that burnt turkey was great.

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Posted November 21

Thanks to ms insomniac's daughter being over from the US in December but not staying until Christmas Day, we're having pre Christmas Christmas with turkey etc etc plus Christmas with turkey etc etc.
And that is the correct way to carve a turkey, especially the breast. When it's stuffed under the skin, slices like that contain a little bit of everything that is good in the world.

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i sent you a tweet on the back of Chuck Wendig delving into the depths of depraved frontier icecream flavours https://twitter.com/LLah_Nomis/status/1065451763258380288
it may not quite satisfy that turkey craving though

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Posted December 2

A turkey hindquarter. All dark meat. Insert butter under the skin. Part fill roasting pan with water and place hindquarter on rack above water. The water stops the turkey drying out and then the butter and turkey fat drips into the water. Make gravy out of water, butter and turkey fat liquid.

Contact your cardiologist immediately after consumption.

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Posted December 13

Consider The Walking Bird, as a subset of birds. It would appear Moa, Elephant & Dodo all rated well on fork based factors. Emu egg is >adequate, perhaps post adolescence Emu are just too fleet of foot to feature frequently in fine dining. (Note to self: vegetarianism, perhaps if you can out run a prey species you can feel good eating it. * thinks as chewing pork* " You should have evolved longer legs Arnold") There are Forty 'leven different penguin, none palatable, all chock full of fish oil one would assume, but they are more swimmers than walkers.

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Posted December 28

Having played American Football for 15 seasons with a revolving door of visiting Americans, I've always thought Thanksgiving is a great holiday. All the good bits of Xmas without the financial burden or stress of what to get someone.
Plus food and football. Joy.

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Respond to 'I think I want some turkey'

Not being a foot fetishist, I’ve never dreamed of drinking champagne from one of Jimmy Choo’s finely crafted stilettos. I’ve never thought of drinking champagne out of anything other than a champagne flute, or in a pinch, a coupe; one of those shallow, wide-rimmed glasses reputed to have been modelled on Marie Antoinette’s boob.

I’ll allow that taking a sip directly from the royal fun bags might not be terrible. But there I draw the line. I do not want my bubbly wine suggesting a tincture of athlete’s foot. And there’s no way known I’m drinking soup from a shoe. This atrocity was most recently catalogued by the excellent ‘We Want Plates’ campaign and no words can do it justice.

At what point in the accelerating collapse of our civilisation did we agree that this bullshit was not just permissible, but worth a business plan? The story of humanity’s climb to the top of the food chain, starts not with our emergence from the primordial ooze, but with our decision to not slurp that ooze from our cupped hands. Anthropologists speculate that we might have started by using sea shells as our dinner bowls, but it was not long before we graduated to agriculture, nation building and dinner plates. Along the way we experimented with eating off rocks and bits of wood or bark, but the inherently superior nature of plates, bowls and cups is shown by the fact that they are found in abundance wherever human beings leave traces of their fallen civilisations. When everything else has been lost to time, a simple porcelain plate endures.

Wooden platters do not endure.

They split and rot and harbour living filth within their cracks and crevices. The term ‘trench mouth’ for ulcerative gingivitis, traces back to the use of wooden trenchers, or shared serving bowls in medieval times. They proved to be excellent transmission vectors for all manner of exciting infectious disease. Our return to these vessels, and worse, is our surrender to entropy. If human progress is no longer possible, why not stick a plastic cup full of tinned soup in a red shoe with a cheese cruller? Nothing matters anymore.

But! But… all is not lost.

A restaurant in the UK was recently fined £50,000 (or eighty-six grand in dollarydoos) for serving bad food on worse letters. After poisoning a dinner party of fourteen guests, Ibrahim's Grill and Steakhouse was ordered by local government health inspectors to stop serving food on cracked, dirty wooden boards. Of course, in the restaurant biz cracked, dirty wooden boards are so fucking hot right now… so Ibrahim kept right on poisoning those fashion-obsessed foodies.

It would be a shame. I think, if this small victory went nowhere. Wooden platters are not the worst things food has been served on, of late. This big fucking chunk of steel I-beam would be in with a shot...

Posted January 22, 2018

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Posted January 22, 2018

Strongly agree with above.

One of the most sincerely held desires I had when serving in various unpleasant locales was for normal, won't-give-me-dysentary food served in sanitary conditions with people around me who didn't want me dead. Why would anyone want, short of Siege of Leningrad conditions, a biscuit filled with wasps? Or why eat some repulsive looking repast off of something salvaged from a scrap heap or a garbage dump?

One of the blessings of civilization is readily available, healthy and nourishing food. Damn, people must be bored with life, kind of like those seekers of the Darwin prize who eat Tide detergent pods.

Ennui kills as surely as a bullet. Look no further than the expensive slop on your trendy wooden plate.

FormerlyKnownAsSimon mumbles...

Saw a funny joke about the tide pods going around the traps (disclaimer, funny cause i'm a dad and it definitely fits in that category):
It's easy to deter girls from eating tide pods but much harder to deter...gents

God. That has lost its shine in less than 24hours :(

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Posted January 22, 2018

Food served on something that reminds me of a workplace, such as a clipboard (yes, I know, I haven't used a clipboard in decades, but office supplies in general), might drive me to a bigger drinks bill. But I won't go back to that place after the initial unpleasant experience.

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There's something amiss with the comments, again. So I'm posting this one by Jim Kable, who emailed it to me.

I spent many years in Japan - and was served food on some of the most spectacular pottery and porcelain - some the work of Living National Treasures (even of some who had passed away - and I don't want to rework that LNT appellation). Commiserations re the wooden platters, etc. - and the drinking from shoes option. Trying to drink out of glass jars is already bad enough!

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Posted January 23, 2018

I put my hand up to take some of the blame for this. I live in hipster central where this sort of frippery was encouraged and glorified. Sipping a short double shot espresso while riding a fixie after eating off a recycled toilet seat on the way to get an ironic tattoo is a way of life here.

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Posted March 15, 2017

Sudragon ducks in to say...

Posted March 15, 2017

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Peter in the bleachers ducks in to say...

Posted March 16, 2017

Isn't the answer always bacon?

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stevetheh is gonna tell you...

Posted March 16, 2017

Had a mate who once served up a dish of Tofu made from the lard bits at the bottom of his BBQ pan (pork roast on spit done the night before).
Was done as a joke for us meat people...problem was it looked damn close to the real thing, guy was a frackin artist with this stuff.
Enter one Vego who was a bit peckish...
Literally before anyone could do/say anything grabbed a slice and gobbed in.
That look of complete and utter horror will stay with me forever.
Thank Glod (TP) the garden was only one doorway away...